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‘Space traffic control’ needed in junk-filled orbits

By David Robson

Image: ESA

ON 11 January 2007, the People’s Liberation Army destroyed an ailing Chinese weather satellite with a ballistic missile. The spacecraft was blown to smithereens, ejecting thousands of shards of debris into space. Since then the junk has been spreading out in mid and low-Earth orbits, a hazard to the ever-growing numbers of spacecraft plying those orbits.

No one knows why this cosmic vandalism took place because Beijing has remained tight-lipped on the issue&colon; old satellites are normally brought down safely over the broad expanse of the Pacific Ocean, or else parked in a graveyard orbit, …